GP9 disesel-electric locomotives

Image credit:Joe Smuin

Two GP9 diesel-electric locomotives, working at full throttle, chant their way past Princeton Subdivision mileage 66 one Saturday in June, 1971. The train is eastbound one mile below Belfort station and the beginning of the Belfort Loops. The gradient in the vicinity of this photograph reaches a steep 2.2% which accounts for the blue haze from the engine's exhaust stacks.

The train crew left Penticton earlier in the day to make the 70 mile trip to Princeton. At Princeton the crew had performed necessary switching duties and had picked up the load of logs shown here. The logs wound up at Penticton Sawmills located on the west end of the CPR yard at Penticton.

Within a short time of this photograph new sawmills came on stream at Penticton, Okanagan Falls, Princeton and Merritt, and as a result, log hauls by rail over the former Kettle Valley became history.